Photo/Illutration A 54-year-old man speaks at a Nov. 7 news conference about the disparity in survivor's pensions due to gender. (Jumpei Miura)

A man plans to go to court to challenge the legality of the survivor’s pension benefits system, which has compensated widowed women far differently than widowed men for more than half a century.

The provisions for such pension benefits were written in 1965 when the usual practice was for the husband to work and the wife to remain at home.

This 54-year-old company employee in Tokyo lost his wife in June 2019 when she suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage at age 51. In March 2023, her death was determined to have been work related.

Under the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Law, a widow can receive a survivor’s pension every year regardless of her age at the time of her husband’s death.

But for a widower, the pension can only be received after he turns 60.

Moreover, he can receive the pension annually only if he was between 55 and 59 when his wife died. If the man is under 55, as is the case of the company employee, only a one-time payment, equivalent to 1,000 days’ worth of the wife’s average salary at the time of her death, is paid out.

Lawyers for the man calculated that he would receive 17.54 million yen ($117,000) as a one-time payment. But the pension amount that would be paid out to a woman in a similar situation comes out to 61.60 million yen, about 3.5 times larger than the one-time payment.

On Nov. 6, the man submitted an application with the Hachioji Labor Standards Inspection Office to receive the survivor’s pension.

Because the pension is not normally paid out to men under 55, like this widower, his application will be rejected. When that happens, he plans to file an administrative lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court to overturn that rejection on the grounds that equality before the law is guaranteed by Article 14 of the Constitution.

At a news conference on Nov. 7, lawyers for the man explained their plan.

Their client said he was surprised at how the old law’s provisions kept him from applying for the survivor’s pension.

In addition, he explained what he and his three children went through after his wife died.

Her death was not certified as being work-related until almost four years after her death. In the three months before her death, the wife was found to have worked more than 60 hours of overtime on average per month.

That led the labor standards inspection office to certify her death as “karoshi,” or death due to overwork.

He and his wife both worked to support their children, two of whom were in university.

“I was in a panic because I did not know how to continue living with our household income cut to less than half,” he said.

His wife had a higher salary, in part, because she worked more overtime.

In 2017, the Supreme Court ruled in a similar case that gender disparity in accident compensation pensions for local civil servants was constitutional.

But the man’s lawyers believe changes in society will lead to a victory in court for their client.

The Supreme Court ruling was for a case that originally was submitted in 2011 at district court.

In that year, 56 percent of all households, excluding single-member households, had both adults working. By 2022, that figure had increased to 70 percent.

Moreover, the pay gap between men and women had decreased between 2011 and 2022.

“Public opinion in Japanese society regarding gender issues has changed greatly in recent years, because of influence from international values," Hiroshi Kawahito, one of the man's lawyers, said at the news conference. "There is the possibility that the Supreme Court will change its ruling.”

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